


THE ALIENATION 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 
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BEFORE THE 




PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY AT CAMBRIDGE, 
JUNE 29, 1876. 



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J. L. DIMAN. #^ V 



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PROVIDENCE: 

SIDNEY S. RIDER. 

1876. 




THE ALIENATION 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 



an Oration 

BEFORE THE 

PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY AT CAMBRIDGE, 
JUNE 29, 1876. 






DIMAN. 



J&^ 



PROVIDENCE: 
SIDNEY S. RIDE: 
1876. 




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4 



THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE : 
PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



ORATION. 



You ask me to address you at a time which hardly 
allows the usual license in the selection of a theme. 
Gathering, as we do, to this annual festival on the eve 
of the great secular commemoration which rivets all 
regards to the issues of an unexampled experiment, I 
should justly forfeit your sympathy were I rash enough 
to divert your thoughts from those imperious public 
concerns which mingle so much of pride and fear with 
their far-reaching problems. Even when meeting as 
associates of an academical fraternity, we cannot for- 
get that we are constituents of a larger society, — 
partners in a fellowship more comprehensive than any 
specific calling or profession, — members incorporate 
into that spacious and supreme commonwealth, with- 
out whose wholesome restraints and benign super- 
vision all bonds would be relaxed, all intellectual prog- 
ress would falter, and all highest aims which we here 
cherish fail of accomplishment. Least of all can we 
be unmindful of such weightier concerns when as- 
sembled, for the first time, under the shadow of these 
walls, — these walls that have been reared in recog- 
nition of the sacrifice made by scholars on the com- 
mon altar, which, long as they stand, will attest the 
alliance of generous culture and unselfish public spirit, 



4 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

and whose very stones would cry out should the sons 
of this illustrious mother ever grow heedless of the 
lessons here inculcated. 

Is the culture which proved itself so equal to the 
strenuous calls of war less able to cope with the strain 
of civil life ? Is that educated class which you repre- 
sent cominof to be a less efficient force in our national 
experiment ? Are our intellectual and our political 
activities doomed to pursue two constantly diverging 
paths, our ideal aims ceasing to qualify and shape our 
practical endeavors ? These are among the questions 
which force themselves upon us at a time like this. 
The solicitude which they awaken is shown in the 
humiliating contrasts so freely drawn between the 
public men of the present day and those of an earlier 
period ; in the frequent discussion of the sphere of the 
scholar in politics, and in the approbation so heartily 
expressed when men of exceptional training have been 
selected to fill important public stations. If this con- 
viction that the breach between Politics and Culture 
is widening be well grounded, it is a capital arraign- 
ment of American society, — the one result that would 
stamp our republican experiment with failure. Does 
our political system exclude from public recognition 
those superior interests which enlist the most enthu- 
siastic cooperation of generous minds, or does it tend 
to strip of legitimate influence those best fitted to 
wrestle with worthy issues? Whichever the cause, 
the result would be equally disastrous. Should such 
a deplorable divorce become established, our culture 
would be cut off from healthful contact with living 
interests, and our politics be robbed of pure and 
ennobling inspiration ; our scholars would sink to 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 5 

pedants and our statesmen to politicians. The merit 
of such a polity as ours cannot be measured by the 
success with which it meets the common ends of gov- 
ernment. However effective it may have proved in 
promoting material prosperity, or a wholesome dis- 
persion of political power, if it does not at the same 
time hold in happy adjustment the highest instincts 
and the positive governing forces of the nation, it 
cannot claim to be truly representative, nor long elicit 
that prompt allegiance of reason and conscience on 
which all genuine representative institutions must ulti- 
mately rest. Not extent of territory, nor multiplica- 
tion of material resources, but a noble and sympa- 
thetic public life is the gauge of national greatness. 
" The excellencie and perfection of a commonweale," 
to borrow the words of Bodin, " are not to be measured 
by the largeness of the bounds thereof, but by the 
bounds of virtue itself." All famous states have been 
informed with ideal forces. No dazzling spread of 
material products at Philadelphia may console us, if, 
throughout that varied show, we are haunted with 
the conviction that what gives meaning and grace 
and admirableness to national success is losing its 
sway over us. Though this great Leviathan, whose 
completed century we celebrate, be indeed hugest of 
all commonwealths that have breasted the flood of 
time, its vast bulk will only stand revealed as more 
ugly, more clumsy, more preposterous, if it simply 
drift on the sleepy drench of private, selfish interests 
and sordid cares. 

In discussing this question let us not forget the 
wider meaning with which the phrase " educated 
class " has become invested. With men of exceptional 



6 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

eminence in the selecter walks of literature and sci- 
ence we are not concerned. That absorbing devotion 
to a pursuit by which alone its supreme prizes are 
purchased, carries with it, in most cases, a correspond- 
ing sacrifice of aptitude for other callings ; and the 
familiar instances in which some of our foremost men 
of letters have entered with success the political arena 
must be reckoned as brilliant exceptions to the rule. 
The habits of the study are not the best discipline 
for affairs, however true the maxim of Bacon, that no 
kind of men love business for itself but those that are 
learned. Experience has shown that the intellectual 
qualities which insure success in the discovery of 
truth are rarely combined with the qualities which 
lend these truths their greatest practical efficiency. 
The service which original genius renders society in 
other ways far more than compensate for any injury 
which its renunciation of ordinary duties may involve. 
The world lost nothing by leaving Adam Smith in a 
professor's chair, and gained nothing by giving La 
Place a minister's portfolio. By the term " educated 
class," I have in mind that much larger number who 
form the mediating term between the intellectual lead- 
ers of the community and the great majority ; the 
interpreters and expounders of principles which others 
have explored ; the liberal connection, so adequately 
represented here to-day, not of the learned professions 
only, but of men generously inured, by the discipline 
of such an ancient university as this, to just opinions, 
and sincere speech, and independent action ; whose 
scholarship is the gracious apparel of well-compacted 
character. In this wider sense, while the phrase im- 
plies educated intellect and educated taste, it implies 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 7 

even more, educated judgment and educated con- 
science, those sovereign qualities which are usurped 
by no single calling, but belong to man as man, — to 
man in the most beneficent play of his faculties, in 
the ripest growth of his reason, and in the widest 
scope of his influence. This is the class through 
whom the impulses of sound culture are disseminated, 
and whose alienation from public interests is a sign of 
such evil portent on our political horizon. 

In our own case this lessening interest of the edu- 
cated class in politics is more significant when we re- 
call the fact that politics once disputed with theology 
the sway over the most vigorous thought among us. 
Without doubt this modification may be traced, in 
part, to the operation of general social causes ; but I 
can by no means consent to their opinion who would 
find its main explanation here. That the interests of 
society are- far more diversified to-day than a century 
ago, that the speculative problems pressing for solu- 
tion are vastly more numerous and complex, that the 
most adventuresome and prolific intellectual energy of 
our time no longer expends itself on those questions 
which in former ages exercised such potent fascina- 
tion, no man will deny ; yet this spurring of mental 
activity in new directions need not have caused its 
zeal to flag in the old. Is it not the prerogative of 
all genuine impulse to quicken a common movement ? 
Does not success in one field rouse to new effort in 
every other ? I would not include in this the wild 
pursuit of wealth, the vulgar materialism, of which in 
recent years we have had such shocking examples, 
and within whose poisoned circle all generous aspira- 
tion withers ; the rivalry which I am here discussing 



8 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

is the rivalry of intellectual forces. Can social prog- 
ress, in this sense, involve any such result as is here 
alleged ? Can there be any real antagonism between 
the study of nature and the study of man ; between 
investigations of the laws printed on the heavens and 
the laws by which society advances and great and dur- 
able states are built up ? When science, ceasing to 
speak as a child, published through Newton decrees 
that claimed obedience beyond the flaming walls of 
space, did it chill the interest of Locke in those inquir- 
ies which scattered such prolific seeds in the soil of 
this new world ? The last century was in France an 
epoch of prodigious scientific movement ; but in what 
period were social and political problems ever more 
keenly debated ? The country that made its boast 
of a Buffon and a Lavoisier, could point not less to a 
Montesquieu and a Turgot. Nay, in the same person 
the two tendencies were sometimes seen combined, and 
the precocious genius of Condorcet was busied equally 
with the differential calculus, and with the foundations 
of human society. After reaching almost the highest 
distinction as a mathematician, he declared, " that for 
thirty years he had hardly passed a day without medi- 
tating on the political sciences." If, therefore, our 
educated class has lost the interest it once felt for po- 
litical problems, this result must be ascribed to some- 
thing else than our stimulated zeal for physical stud- 
ies. And if we can no longer say with Algernon 
Sydney, that political questions " so far concern all 
mankind, that besides the influence on our future life 
they may be said to comprehend all that in this world 
deserves to be cared for," they certainly have not lost 
their importance as the great issues of modern society 
are more distinctly revealed. 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 9 

The proposition has not lacked vigorous support 
with a brilliant class of English writers, who shrink 
appalled from a political tendency which they can see 
no way of successfully resisting, that the popular 
movement of modern times, resting as it does on the 
postulate that all men should be equal so far as the 
laws can make them so, reduces the individual to im- 
potence by making him a hopelessly feeble unit in 
the presence of an overwhelming majority. In such 
a plight it is mere mockery, we are told, to exhort 
men of superior parts to exercise an independent in- 
fluence. The wise and the good stand on a level with 
the foolish and the bad, and to hope that reason will 
rule in the ordering of affairs when each one is pro- 
vided with a vote and may cast it as he likes, is an 
idle dream. This argument does not apply, of course, 
to our own experiment alone, but is directed against 
a tendency which in all societies that claim to be civil- 
ized is setting forward with accelerated force. It 
seems enough to say, in answer, that we are not now 
in a position to analyze with accuracy a movement of 
such tremendous import. Modern democracy is too 
recent a phenomenon to admit of any estimate as yet 
of the complex range of its social and political and 
intellectual consequences. It is on the dead, not on 
the living, that the coroner holds his inquest. An- 
cient society was comparatively simple ; its phenom- 
ena for the most part admit of obvious explanation ; 
its completed history allows us to pass a confident 
judgment upon it as a whole. Mediaeval society, if 
less simple, still turned, in its chief phases, on few 
points ; even feudalism, once so perplexed a study, 
has yielded to recent analysis, and when it arose, how 



IO THE ALIENATION OF THE 

it affected the classes included in its range, why it 
came to an end, are questions about which scholars 
are ceasing to dispute. But that great popular move- 
ment, which is now so clearly seen to have thrust its 
strong roots down into the Middle Age, is still in 
process ; we ourselves are but parts of it ; the terms 
of the mighty equation are not yet written out. It is 
pleasant to fancy that we stand secure on the rocks 
and gaze at the mighty rush of the waters, — 

" E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem," 

but it is fancy and nothing more. In the flood of 
phenomena all perspective is blurred, and relations 
of cause and effect are hopelessly mixed. We are in 
danger of joining what has only a seeming connec- 
tion, and of attributing to one class of causes conse- 
quences that are due wholly to another. No country 
ever had a more genial and appreciative critic of its 
institutions than we had in the accomplished French- 
man who attempted the first philosophical estimate of 
American Democracy, but how crude and ludicrous 
even, in the light of our later experience, seem some 
of De Tocqueville's most elaborate judgments. Has 
American Democracy, we may well ask, proved un- 
equal to the task of levying taxes, or of raising ar- 
mies ? De Tocqueville was impressed, as others who 
have come among us have been impressed, with the 
lack of conspicuous ability among our public men; but 
to argue that democratic institutions are unfavorable 
to the development of the highest individual excel- 
lence, because men of moderate parts are most com- 
monly selected for public offices, implies a misunder- 
standing of the meaning and function of government 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. II 

in a democratic state. When it is so confidently ar- 
gued that the theory of political equality must result 
in mediocrity, because it holds out fewer prizes to ex- 
ceptional superiority in the public service, it should 
be remembered that in other ways it multiplies the 
incitements to effort. And even conceding that the 
removal of political restrictions can add nothing to 
the intrinsic force of individual character, it by no 
means follows that such removal presents any bar to 
the full and varied development of existing forces. 

Is it not time to have done with what the latest his- 
torian of England terms " this silly talk about Democ- 
racy." Democratic institutions are on trial ; so is 
modern society itself; it is quite too soon to bring 
in the verdict. Of all the reproaches hurled against 
the popular tendency of modern times, the most ill- 
grounded, surely, is the dismal cry about the tyranny 
of the majority. This is one of the especial dangers 
on which De Tocqueville dwells ; and later writers, 
borrowing the hint from him, are never weary of re- 
peating that, overawed and intimidated by the opinion 
of the unthinking mass, all expression of individual 
sentiment is stifled, and the intelligent and thoughtful 
few are deterred from attempting to wield the influ- 
ence which they ought to exercise. But if in a com- 
munity where law authorizes and protects the expres- 
sion of opinion, any individual is restrained by pru- 
dential considerations from promulgating what his 
reason recognizes as true, or his conscience affirms as 
right, the true explanation must be sought, not in 
any tyranny of the majority, but rather in the lack of 
that " intrinsic force " on which Leslie Stephen so 
vigorously insists. Every fuller soul, elected in the 



12 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

great crises of history, to lead the forlorn hope of the 
race, has been in a minority ; nay, the captain in the 
most marvellous revolution the world has seen was in 
a minority of one. Earnest, aggressive, self-forgetful 
minorities have been, in every age, the conditions of 
social progress ; against them the tyranny of the ma- 
jority has always been ruthlessly exercised ; exercised 
by arbitrary power, — under the forms of law, — with 
the sanction of religion ; exercised with the sword, 
the faggot, and the rack ; and instead of wielding with 
us an aggravated rule, never has the power of the 
majority been subject, in so many ways, to checks and 
bounds as under the institutions which an English 
Lord Chancellor has described as the very greatest 
refinement of polity to which any age has ever given 
birth. And never too, it may be truly said, has the 
will of the minority been more outspoken than with 
us. The crowning event in our hundred years of his- 
tory, the turning point in our great struggle for 
national integrity, was the result of a public senti- 
ment, created, shaped, carried to its triumphant issue 
by a persistent and resolute minority ! 

" For Gods delight in gods, 
And thrust the weak aside." 

An explanation of the abstinence of our educated 
class from politics, more nearly connected with our 
distinctive polity, has been discovered by Mr. Bage- 
hot, in the difference between a cabinet and a presi- 
dential system. To this difference, he claims, must 
also be attributed the lack of any public opinion in 
America finished and chastened like that of England. 
With the English, attention to politics means a real 
direction of affairs, the nation making itself felt with 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 13 

effective force at the determining crisis of party con- 
flicts. Whether the ministry shall go out or remain 
in, is decided by a parliamentary division, and on this 
decision public opinion outside of Parliament, the 
secret, pervading disposition of society, exercises a 
potent influence. The nation is stirred to the expres- 
sion of an opinion, because it realizes that its opinion 
is decisive. The sympathy remains at all times close 
and vital between public sentiment and the actual 
governing power. But with ourselves precisely the 
reverse of this obtains. Save in the instant of exer- 
cising the elective franchise, the nation has no decisive 
influence ; in that supreme effort its vital forces are 
exhausted, and it must wait an appointed time until 
its periodic function is restored. Hence it is not in- 
cited to keep its judgment fresh ; nor is its opinion 
disciplined by continuous exercise. Our congres- 
sional disputes are " prologues without a play " ; they 
involve no catastrophe ; the prize of power is not a 
legislative gift. As a natural result men of mark are 
not strongly tempted to secure seats in a deliberative 
body when they have only power to make a speech, 
when they are neither stimulated by prospect of in- 
fluence nor chastened by dread of responsibility. 
And when public opinion itself is not subject to con- 
stant modification, those who shape public opinion are 
deprived of the most positive incitement to effort. 
The results are too distant and uncertain. 

To much of this reasoning it is enough to say, that 
while the term of office of the administration is fixed 
by law, and so far our system is open to the reproach 
of being inelastic, yet the term is so brief that the . 
nation hardly recovers from the excitement of one 



14 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

presidential election before it is plunged into another ; 
that the choice of the chief magistrate is only one of 
numberless ways in which the elective franchise is 
exercised ; that congressional debates, if they have 
not the effect, on the instant, to change the adminis- 
tration, do have a direct and often a controlling influ- 
ence upon its policy ; and that the national legislature, 
so far from being unaffected by public opinion out of 
doors, is often controlled by it to a deplorable extent. 
That in the agony of a great ministerial crisis, a par- 
liamentary debate fixes public attention, as it cannot 
be fixed by a speech in Congress, must be conceded ; 
but that such an eager strife for power and place, dis- 
ciplines and instructs public opinion any more effec- 
tually than our more rigid method is an assertion that 
seems destitute of all sound support. And still less 
am I disposed to admit that the participation of our 
educated class in politics would be sensibly promoted 
by the removal of the strongly accented distinction 
between the executive and the legislative branch, 
which constitutes so cardinal a feature of our consti- 
tution, and by making the tenure of the highest admin- 
istrative office directly dependent on the will of a 
congressional majority. English experience does not 
warrant the expectation that public life would be ren- 
dered more attractive to men of nice moral instincts ; 
and while the immediate prospect of great place, with- 
out doubt, supplies a most powerful stimulus to effort, 
it can yet, under ordinary conditions, address itself 
to only a limited class. The great body of educated 
men must be inspired by a worthier motive. 

While, however, I cannot concede to Mr. Bagehot 
that the chief explanation of the alienation of our 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 15 

educated men from politics is to be found in the mere 
mode of administration, I think it must be admitted 
that there are certain features of our system which 
have tended, in no small degree, to weaken the hold 
of public interests upon some of the more earnest 
and disinterested of this class. Our system is one of 
carefully limited powers, from which is excluded the 
larger share of those questions which appeal to the 
deepest convictions of mankind. It sprang from polit- 
ical needs, and was carefully fashioned to compass 
certain definite and practical aims. But since that 
day when the conquering Franks conferred temporal 
dominion on the successor of the fisherman, the ques- 
tions which have allured the most generous and en- 
thusiastic spirits to the field of politics have grown 
out of the disputed relations of the temporal and 
spiritual powers. These commanding problems for 
a time turned Dante from poetry and Occam from 
theology ; and if, in the press of modern interests, 
they have ceased to reign supreme, they have still 
given to modern European politics most of its noblest 
impulses. They have provoked the most profound 
inquiries, the most disinterested effort, the most un- 
selfish surrender to magnanimous, if not seldom mis- 
taken and impracticable ends. They have drawn into 
the heated arena of politics not a few whom only the 
most sacred allegiance to ideal principle could have 
tempted to a public career. On the other hand, our 
politics, for the past hundred years, have been bereft 
of these ennobling impulses, and political life, of neces- 
sity, has lost no small part of the attraction which it 
has furnished, in other lands, to the purest, most ear- 
nest, most cultivated minds. It has not, for example, 



1 6 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

been within the scope of our American institutions to 
produce such a man as the late Count Montalembert, 
coupling the courage and address of a great orator 
with the religious enthusiasm of a monk, delighting 
to look at politics as primarily the means of realizing 
spiritual results, a genuine fils des croises amid the 
fierce debates of the French Assembly ; nor such a 
man as Gladstone, faulty perhaps as a mere party 
leader, but treading with no unequal step after Pitt 
and Peel as a parliamentary debater, and surpassing 
both in the comprehensiveness of his range and the 
earnestness of his moral conviction, habitually look- 
ing at politics in the light of man's largest relations 
as an immortal being, disowned by Oxford when most 
truly faithful to Oxford's earliest traditions. That 
memorable measure which taxed his distinctive capa- 
bilities as an original legislator, and elicited the most 
transcendent exhibition of his oratory, was a prob- 
lem with which no American statesman could be 
called to deal. And who supposes, for a moment, 
that the ordinary discipline which a public career 
with us supplies would qualify one of our party lead- 
ers, after laying down the cares of office, to discuss, 
as Mr. Gladstone has recently discussed, the ques- 
tions to which the novel assumptions of the Vatican 
have given such added significance. If the separa- 
tion of church and state that obtains with us has 
helped religion, it has certainly narrowed the range 
and weakened the motive of political action. 

But not only was our government established as 
one of expressly limited powers ; very soon after it 
went into operation a political thesis came to be gen- 
erally accepted which gave this principle a wider and 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 17 

more pernicious application. At the beginning of 
the present century the maxim was eagerly accepted 
and enforced, that the functions of government, in 
general, ought to be confined within the narrowest 
limits, and directed only to the most utilitarian ends. 
Since the adoption of our federal constitution two 
distinct political tendencies have shown themselves 
among us, — two tendencies radically distinct in ori- 
gin and spirit, yet singularly tending to the same 
result. One was a strong infusion of the politics of 
sentiment, borrowed from Rousseau by Mr. Jefferson, 
coloring our famous Declaration, and proving itself 
through all our history by a passion for abstract max- 
ims of equality and liberty, by a somewhat ill-regulated 
zeal in promoting whatever schemes of social and 
political reform, and by an undiscriminating sympathy 
with revolutionary movements throughout the world. 
The marked characteristic of this tendency has been 
contempt for the teachings of tradition and experi- 
ence, and a confident disposition to solve each new 
problem simply upon its own merits. Political action, 
.controlled and guided by such maxims, can have but 
slender attraction for the educated class, whose very 
training implies respect for precedent, who shrink 
with instinctive suspicion from a sentimental appre- 
hension of political or moral truths, and who are 
accustomed to value liberty simply as a means to an 
end. If by liberty be meant merely the removal of re- 
straint, — the sense in which some of its most famous 
advocates in our time seem to understand it, — it will 
be long before men of sound culture can be brought 
to give it a very enthusiastic countenance. But by the 
side of this sentimental conception of political rights 
3 



1 8 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

there has existed another tendency which in actual 
practice has usurped the control of public policy. 
The twin gods of our political Pantheon have been 
Rousseau and Bentham. To these two masters all 
our political theories since we became an independent 
nation may be traced. For whatever may be thought 
of the utilitarian philosophy as an abstract code of 
morals, it has unquestionably stamped itself upon our 
time as a practical rule of legislation. Had this rule 
always been applied in the enlarged definition given 
it by Mill, its results might have been less deplor- 
able ; but the maxim so emphatically reiterated by 
the founder of the school, that government is a neces- 
sary evil, the legislator being simply a physician sum- 
moned to wrestle with a disease, worked a fatal paral- 
ysis of political opinion. The state was unclothed of 
all that gave it authority and majesty; politics, sur- 
rendered to mere expediency, were hopelessly divorced 
from the restraints of right and duty, and high 
sounding declarations of zeal for the general good 
came, too often, to cover the vulgar conflict of private 
and selfish interests. Here, too, so far as concerned 
the participation of the educated class, the same re- 
sult inevitably followed. Men whose deepest solici- 
tude was for ideal and spiritual ends, shrunk from 
what seemed so much a struggle for mere personal 
advantages. 

But, without doubt, the consideration that has 
weighed most in chilling the interest of our educated 
class in politics is connected far less with the theory 
of our government than with its practical working. 
It is the wide-spread conviction that in the actual 
administration of such affairs as fall within its limited 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 1 9 

range, culture, training, intellectual equipment of any- 
kind, instead of being valued as essential conditions 
of efficient public service, are rather hindrances to 
a political career. It was the evident expectation of. 
the framers of our system, that the working of the 
elective principle would result in the elimination of 
the best elements of the body politic ; and that emi- 
nent fitness would be the recognized test for responsi- 
ble position. As we are forced sadly to confess, this 
hope has been disappointed, and our government has 
come to embody, not the highest, but the average in- 
telligence, and to hold out its highest prizes to adroit 
management rather than to admitted desert. That 
the majority of those who formed the educated class 
in this country when our constitution went into opera- 
tion, looked with distrust upon the experiment, is a 
fact familiar to all students of our history ; but could 
they have foreseen the inevitable modification which 
that experiment was destined to undergo, could they 
have foreseen how much more powerful that popular 
control which they so much dreaded, was destined to 
become, their distrust would have changed to despair; 
over the portal of the structure which they reared 
with so much pains, they would have carved the omi- 
nous warning — 

" All hope abandon, ye who enter in ! " 

And yet, if we fairly considered it, this modification 
was but the logical working out of the primary postu- 
late in which our whole political system rested and 
if we take a just view of that system, will furnish no 
ground whatever for the suspicion that we have wan- 
dered from the normal path of our political develop- 



20 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

ment. It is a modification that, after all, has lessened 
rather in appearance than in reality, the real influence 
of the educated class. It furnishes no ground either 
for indifference or discouragement ; for if the visible 
prizes of political success lie less within their grasp, 
the opportunities for the exercise of a permanent and 
controlling influence have been in no way diminished. 
Let us concede, for the argument, the utmost that 
the most dismal of our political Cassandras have as- 
serted, that a representative government, under dem- 
ocratic rule, must inevitably conform to the level of 
the majority which it represents ; and conceding, too, 
what in this whole discussion has been strangely as- 
sumed as a thing of course, that the majority in any 
community will always prove themselves less capable 
and less intelligent in the direction of affairs than the 
minority, it still would by no means follow that under 
institutions like ours an educated minority would be 
finally cut off from a wholesome participation in po- 
litical duties. Those who reason in this way reason 
from precedents that do not apply to our condition, 
and mistake the function of government, and the sig- 
nificance of public offices under a system where the 
representative principle is allowed full play. For the 
gist of the complaint that educated men with us are 
debarred from exercising their legitimate influence in 
politics, for the most part means simply that they are 
not selected to fill public offices, and so cannot make 
themselves felt in the ordinary manipulations of the 
political machine. The complaint is well grounded, 
and the grievance complained of is a real grievance ; 
yet does it have the significance which has been at- 
tributed to it? May not what has been so persistently 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 21 

urged in proof of our political decline be a passing 
but inevitable phase of our development ? But ex- 
cluding other considerations that here suggest them- 
selves, the position on which I wish to fasten your 
attention is simply this ; — that under a strictly repre- 
sentative government, like our own, public functions, 
even when regarded from a strictly political point of 
view, are less significant than under systems where 
power is possessed, not as a trust, but as an estate, and 
hence that exclusion from a technical public career 
carries with it far less sacrifice of real influence. 

The framers of our constitution were not seeking 
to carry out any abstract formulas ; their simple aim 
was to set up a compact and well-articulated constitu- 
tional republic. Yet while they had in mind a system 
rather than a theory, and restrained public opinion by 
checks and guarantees, they built on rational founda- 
tions and recognized a principle the full scope of 
which they did not themselves, perhaps, suspect. In 
this recognition lay the essential originality of their 
contrivance, and the sole claim of their labors to mark 
an epoch in the history of political experiments. In 
the governments of the Old World, the administration 
was the state. The famous maxim of Louis XIV. 
was no empty boast, but the terse formulating of a 
maxim which Bossuet had elaborately vindicated as 
the teaching of Holy Writ. In the purely modern 
monarchy which the unscrupulous genius of Frederic 
erected upon force, the maxim was as fully recog- 
nized ; and even in the mixed system which Walpole 
and Grenville administered, hereditary monarchy and 
hereditary peerage remained, in theory at least, remote 
from any popular control. But our system, whatever 



2 2 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

the artificial checks it sought to interpose, rested, at 
last, in the explicit recognition of one single, homo- 
geneous, sovereign power. This power lay behind 
the legislature, behind the executive, behind the con- 
stitution itself; for no principle can be plainer than 
that so strongly insisted on by Hobbes, — and which 
Austin has repeated after Hobbes, — that sovereign 
power is, in its nature, incapable of legal limitation. 
Resting thus, as our institutions do, both in theory 
and fact, on popular will, it is true of us in a sense 
more complete than it has been possible to affirm it 
of any former political society, that it is Public Opin- 
ion which rules; that all powerful judge, which, in 
the language of the accomplished prince who is writ- 
ing so impartially the story of our great civil strife, 
" possesses perhaps the caprices, but not the fatal in- 
fatuation of despots." With us government is the 
mere function through which the public will is made 
efficient, not directing that will, but created and deter- 
mined by it. Washington himself most clearly rec- 
ognized this principle, when, in 1793, he wrote: "I 
only wish, whilst I am a servant of the public, to know 
the will of my masters, that I may govern myself ac- 
cordingly ; " words of peculiar emphasis as coming 
from such a man. It is a commonplace remark that 
a leading tendency of modern civilization is to make 
the influence of society greater and the influence of 
government relatively less ; but it would be a more ac- 
curate statement that government has become more 
the agency through which the power of society is 
wielded, the relation of the two being not antagonistic, 
but harmonious. According to this view, govern- 
ment should receive, not give, the impulse. That 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 23 

government alone is strong which marches at the 
head of popular convictions. Never was the real 
strength of our own government so proudly demon- 
strated as in the dark crisis when the conspiracy 
against it first revealed the mighty force of the na- 
tional sentiment. One reason, doubtless, why the 
political discussions of the past generation have lost so 
much of their interest, is, that they were so much con- 
cerned with the mere form under which the masking 
spirit hides itself, and reached so seldom the deeper 
sources of national life. And one of the most pre- 
cious results of. our late struggle has been to cure us 
of the habit of looking so exclusively at the mere 
formal constitution, and turning our gaze to those 
deeper conditions of national unity and strength that 
lie in the great providential dispositions of our his- 
tory. Let us not call it a victory of the North over 
the South, but rather the vindication of our formal 
law by the great facts of our historical development. 
In this truer, profounder conception of the state as 
anterior to the most sacred and authoritative expres- 
sions of its will, we have at once the right explanation 
of our political system, and at the same time the most 
encouraging exhibition of the true sphere of the edu- 
cated class. For it follows that the real governing 
class are not, and are not meant to be, the mere agents 
of administration, but those on whom rests the respon- 
sibility of creating and informing that sovereign Pub- 
lic Opinion, — of which, in a free community, the 
administration is the mere mouth-piece and attorney. 
What does it matter that this Public Opinion can 
only make itself efficient through the action of the 
majority? In a government by discussion, to borrow 



24 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

a favorite phrase of Mr. Bagehot, the type toward 
which all civilized states are tending, and of which our 
own presents the most perfect example, what other 
method could be introduced ? Lord Bacon, who de- 
nounces an appeal to the majority as the worst of all 
tests in the decision of purely intellectual questions, 
admits that in politics and religion it is the safest 
rule. It was the voice of the majority which fixed 
the articles of Catholic faith at Nice, and which ad- 
mitted the Bill of Rights as part of the British consti- 
tution. It is no modern device, as some would seem 
to think, but was recognized by the Greeks as a fun- 
damental principle of corporate political action, which 
so careful a writer as the late Cornewall Lewis terms 
the most important improvement introduced into 
practical politics since the dawn of civilization. All 
admit that the contrivance is defective ; but when the 
ultimate decision is made to rest, not with any single 
individual, but with a collective body, it is difficult to 
see what other arrangement could be substituted for 
it ; and the phrase, " rule of the masses," will lose 
much of its repugnant meaning, if we allow it to be 
divested of associations which it has inherited from 
other ages, and from conditions of society widely dif- 
fering from our own. In the old Latin proverb it 
is not inaptly termed argumentum pessimi ; for a Ro- 
man populace, at least in Seneca's time, was com- 
pacted of every pernicious element. Even as the 
phrase is now used in most European countries, it has 
no meaning here ; for, happily, we have no class sen- 
tenced by inexorable social distinctions to hopeless 
poverty and ignorance. The exceptions which a few 
of our larger cities furnish are not products of our 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 25 

civilization. The majority with us is a majority not 
indeed of high culture, not always of wise discern- 
ment, not exempt from the influence of prejudice, but 
singularly open to new impressions, of flexible opin- 
ions, of ever-fluctuating social consequence, and never 
reluctant to recognize the application of a principle. 
It surely does not raise the great historian of Athenian 
democracy in our estimation when we learn that in 
his last days his faith in free institutions was shaken 
because the majority of the American people showed 
such tenacious fidelity to the great principles on which 
all free governments must rest. 

In asserting so strongly that the distinctive polit- 
ical function of the educated class, in a community 
governed by discussion, is discharged less at the bal- 
lot-box, or in the technical duties of administration, 
than in shaping public opinion, let me not seem to 
argue for the release of any portion of the body politic 
from their personal obligations as citizens. I am not 
unmindful of the benefit that results from the direct 
participation of every educated man in politics, — the 
more generous direction of political action, the eleva- 
tion of political discussion, the wholesome correction 
of political methods which his presence ought to im- 
ply. I do not mean that the educated class should 
dwell apart ; on the contrary, I hail it as a cheer- 
ing sign when the representatives of this class replace 
in our political machinery the mere party politician. 
But I am not the less persuaded that the supreme 
service of the educated man is rather indirect than 
direct, — rendered less in his limited capacity as a 
constituent part of the body politic than in his broad 
and comprehensive relations as a member of society. 
4 



26 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

I would not utter a word to detain him from the 
primary meeting or the political convention ; but in 
neither of these can his distinguishing parts be called 
into most efficient play. In the primary meeting he 
is too often surprised by a packed majority; on the 
floor of the convention he finds himself thwarted by 
the tricks of the wily parliamentary tactician. It is 
only in the indirect and slower process of appeal- 
ing to public opinion that the ultimate vindication of 
truth and justice is assured ; and it is precisely in his 
fitness to make this appeal that the educated man — 
the man educated in the ample sense in which I have 
defined the term — stands head and shoulders above 
his fellows. He is a spiritual power in the state that 
no factions can outwit, that no majorities can over- 
whelm. He makes himself felt in a sphere where 
the vulgar conditions of political action no longer 
operate, — 

" No private, but a person raised 
With strength sufficient and command from heaven." 

And how false to history their view who hold that 
in a democratic community, or, in other words, in a 
community governed by reason and discussion, such 
a man can be stripped of any legitimate influence ! 
I will not appeal to the familiar and splendid argu- 
ment of antiquity, — for it may be objected that polit- 
ical equality then invariably had slavery as its corner- 
stone, — but will limit myself to modern examples. 
Where, let me ask, did the earliest impulses of dis- 
tinctive modern civilization show themselves but in 
the democratic communes of the Middle Age ? The 
movement towards equality of classes here initiated 
marked the beginning of the great mediaeval renais- 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 27 

sance. What, indeed, were the famous mediaeval uni- 
versities, in their formal organization, but applications 
of that fruitful principle of corporate action which the 
free towns protected against the encroachments of 
feudalism ? The venerable terms " university " and 
" college " are simply survivals of the far more ancient 
municipal fraternities. Bologna and Paris and Oxford 
were, in fact, free commonwealths, creations through- 
out of a popular impulse, memorable protests against 
the isolation of man from man. Macaulay has noted 
as an inconsistency in Milton, that while .his opinions 
were democratic, his imagination delighted to revel 
amid the illusions of aristocratic society ; alleging in 
proof the contrast between the Treatises on Prelacy 
and the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture 
in II Penseroso. But the instincts of the poet were 
right ; there was no discord whatever between his 
reason and his taste. The most distinctive products 
of mediaeval architecture, — those soaring spires, those 
tranquil fronts of fretted stone that hush the murmur- 
ing surge of the thronged market place, those 

" Storied windows, richly dight, 
Casting a dim, religious light," — 

all had a democratic origin. The long-drawn aisles 
of Chartres, of Rouen, of Amiens, of Beauvais, the 
vast structures in which the common people could 
assemble around the episcopal throne, were popular 
protests against monastic and baronial exclusiveness. 
The cloister had no longer the monopoly of art. In- 
vestigation and experiment were substituted for tradi- 
tion. The pointed style of the thirteenth century, in 
which the architectural taste and structural skill of 
the mediaeval builders were united in their consum- 



28 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

mate perfectness, was not an ecclesiastical and aristo- 
cratic but a lay and democratic style. Its novel and 
surpassing forms were direct embodiments of the 
new aspirations throbbing in lay society. The laity 
alone, from their readiness to adopt rational methods, 
were competent to execute these surprising works. 
Viollet-le-Duc does not hesitate to say that the period 
included in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is the 
most instructive in the history of art, for the simple 
reason that it was the expression of a movement pro- 
voked by the lay spirit acting against tradition ; and 
the lay spirit of that age was simply another name for 
the spirit of the free towns. 

I would not depreciate the debt we owe to the 
ecclesiastical and the aristocratic institutions of the 
Middle Age. Who can forget the monastic scholar, 
feeding the lamp of learning through the dark night 
of ignorance and barbarism ? Who can refuse to rec- 
ognize the seeds of generous and polite sentiment hid 
under the rough crust of feudal society ? Who of us 
has not felt the romantic charm of a life so removed 
from anything with which we come in contact in this 
new world ? I recall the rapture of old vacation ram- 
bles by famous streams where 

" A splendor falls on castle walls, 
And snowy summits old in story," 

when every thrilled sense and spell of song and legend 
was quickened by the companionship of one who 
ranked with the noblest of those whom yonder walls 
commemorate, but still I cannot forget that the intel- 
lectual revival of Europe received its most powerful 
impulse, not from the priest, nor from the noble, but 
from the citizen. It was from social conditions essen- 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 29 

tially like our own, that modern civilization sprang, 
and when we are sneered at as a gigantic middle-class 
experiment, when we are told that the theory of equal- 
ity on which our institutions rest, can result only in 
the dismal mediocrity of Chinese civilization, in the 
unbroken level of a western prairie, let us call to mind 
the cheering words of Schiller, that the creator of 
modern culture was the middle class. If the past has 
any lesson to teach us on this point, it is the lesson of 
encouragement and hope. If we have anything to 
learn from experience, it is, before all else, the lesson 
that when political institutions rest on public opinion, 
when the final appeal lies to the reason and intelli- 
gence of men, when above all the great majority are 
prepared by a widely diffused common education to 
entertain this appeal, to pass a judgment on the great 
issues continually brought before them, the educated 
class, the shapers and instructors of public opinion, 
sit on a throne of state beside which the common seat 
of kings seems idle pomp ! 

With this interpretation of the distinctive sphere of 
the educated class, how enlarged the scope of their 
influence. In its practical operation so much more 
moral than legal, that influence is no longer fettered 
by the limitations which the mere form of govern- 
ment imposes. For the primary relation of the edu- 
cated man is not to the technical duties of the citizen, 
but to the whole life of the nation. His hand may 
seldom touch the visible cranks and levers, but he 
calls into action the vital forces by which the vast 
engine of state is kept in motion. He sweeps over a 
wide range of questions with which the mere poli- 
tician never comes in contact. The laws may assign 



30 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

bounds to political action, but they can interpose no 
check to the operation of public opinion ; they are 
but mile-stones that mark social and political progress. 
In a representative system the formal constitution 
must conform to the growth of public opinion, for 
this is the wisdom by which the house is builded, by 
which its seven pillars must be hewn out. To the bar 
of public opinion, the august tribunal of public reason, 
all questions that affect man in his relations with his 
fellow man may be brought. The contrast between 
the dreary stagnation of a despotism, and the ani- 
mating stir of a free state is simply the result of the 
principle that a free, and above all, a representative 
government must be a progressive realization of ideas. 
Its existence is an existence of conflict and endeavor ; 
it implies strenuous service, and imposes inexorable 
responsibilities. But while the form of government 
in a free state of necessity is plastic, yet as the life of 
the nation is continuous, its present action must have 
constant reference to its previous history. The condi- 
tions of healthy growth are violated, if, at any time, it 
be rudely uprooted from its own past. In what line of 
amendment it may wisely move, must be decided from 
its own traditions, and it is especially in the wise inter- 
pretation and useful application of these traditions 
that the influence of an educated class makes itself 
felt. 

As thus dealing with ideas rather than with institu- 
tions, with the essential life of the nation rather than 
with its mere machinery of administration, the edu- 
cated class in a free state renders its most inestimable 
service as the exponent and upholder of those spirit- 
ual forces on which society ultimately rests. And 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 3 1 

here we touch truths of vital moment. Though the 
maxim of Winthrop be no longer true, in any literal 
application, that the civil state is reared out of the 
churches, yet the principal is eternally and unchanga- 
bly true, that in the deeper life of the nation, the spir- 
itual and the temporal can never be divided. The 
mere government may be secular, but the state is built 
on everlasting moral foundations. We may do away 
with an established church, but we can never emanci- 
pate ourselves from the restraints and obligations of 
Christian civilization; they are part of our history, 
they are inwrought into our being, we cannot deny 
them without destroying our identity as a people ! 
For in its deepest analysis, the state is a moral person ; 
in no other way could it serve as the agent and min- 
ister of that beneficent Providence by which history 
is invested with a moral order, and rendered luminous 
with an increasing purpose. However, in common 
and limited transactions, we may discriminate between 
the spiritual and the temporal, we cannot do so when 
dealing with those supreme interests and relations, 
from which the ultimate ends of human action, and 
the sanctions of civil society, derive their meaning. 
The life of a nation, like the life of an individual, 
forms an indivisible whole. The soul is one, and all 
voluntary acts of a moral being must be spiritual acts. 
We cannot at one moment be spiritual beings, and at 
the next be released from spiritual restraints ; now sub- 
ject to law and now a law unto ourselves ! The prin- 
ciple of the separation of church and state receives 
an unwarranted and most pernicious interpretation, 
when it is understood to mean, as it so often is, that 
religion and politics occupy two wholly distinct prov- 



32 THE ALIENATION OE THE 

inces. Much, I know, has been said of the non-po- 
litical character of early Christianity, but the relation 
of the primitive Christians to external society was 
exceptional ; they were subjects of a state based on 
antagonistic beliefs, and were hemmed in on every 
hand with corrupt pagan institutions. But as the Gos- 
pel gradually refashioned society, this relation was 
changed ; the church found its most efficient ally in 
that secular arm which had so cruelly crushed it ; 
and religious conviction, instead of alienating men 
from political duties, became the most powerful spur 
to political action. Rothe, indeed, has argued that 
Christianity is essentially a political principle, and 
that it is the destiny of all distinctive ecclesiastical 
organizations to be finally absorbed into a Christian 
state. 

Throughout the early period of our own history 
the only educated class were the ministers of religion. 
To furnish the churches with trained teachers was the 
main purpose for which our most venerable institu- 
tutions of learning were founded. While the clergy 
no longer hold this exceptional rank, they still form a 
numerous and conspicuous part of our educated class, 
and so far as concerns the shaping of popular opinion, 
doubtless its most influential part. They touch the 
deepest chords of popular sentiment as no other agency 
does. And if it be true that the state is but the em- 
bodiment of this popular sentiment, that its action is 
inevitably shaped by the convictions which the great 
body of the people come from time to time to cherish 
as right and true, what duty can rest upon the pulpit 
more sacred and more imperative than the duty of sub- 
jecting this popular sentiment to the discipline of re- 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. S3 

ligious belief? Even what is termed speculative 
opinion cannot be set aside as unimportant, for no 
earnest, efficient action, no action aiming at large and 
beneficent results can be severed from speculative 
opinion. From speculative opinion all the vital move- 
ments of society take their shape. Mr. Burke, in a 
brilliant passage, has declared that Politics and the 
Pulpit have very little in common, but it was the Pur- 
itan pulpit which created the noblest type of the re- 
publican citizen. 

And in this trying crisis through which we now 
are passing, when a cup of humiliation and shame 
is pressed to our lips such as we were not forced 
to drink in the darkest hour when treason stalked 
abroad, to whom shall we look to quicken our slug- 
gish moral sense, to diffuse a more sober temper, to 
inspire a more genuine reverence for things that are 
true, honest, lovely and of good report, rather than to 
the ministers of religion ? Who but they can edu- 
cate that public will which, Sismondi tells us, " is the 
sum of all the wills, of all the intelligence, of all the 
virtue of the nation?" What voice but theirs shall 
bid that storm to rise which shall sweep forever away 
the whole abhorred crew that have swarmed like un- 
clean birds to the seats of power, — 

" conspiring to uphold their state 
By worse than hostile deeds, violating the ends 
For which our country is a name so dear ?" 

I cannot but think that our American Christianity has 
come, of late years, to concern itself too exclusively 
with private and social needs, and has lost the mascu- 
line hold it once had on public duties. In enforcing 
5 



34 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

the fear of God in " civil things," no minister of the 
Gospel need for a moment think that his is falling 
below the highest level of his official duty. Who but 
looks back with veneration to the New England min- 
ister of the olden time, — like Ward, of Ipswich, 
whose vigorous and well-furnished intellect could turn 
from the composition of sermons to the drawing up 
of a " Body of Liberties," — like many of a later day, 
who, in the genuine tradition of the fathers, refused 
to call any human duties common or unclean. Nay, 
are not some of the most brilliant memories of this 
anniversary 'associated with one whose course has but 
just ended, — one in whom the sinewy fibre of the past 
generation was singularly blended with the grace, the 
sweetness, the insight of the new, — who, while ex- 
ploring the innermost mysteries of spiritual experi- 
ence, could discuss with unrivalled force the true 
wealth and weal of nations? Known to the world as 
a preacher and theologian, he was not less known to 
his neighbors as a wise, and zealous, and public- 
spirited citizen ; and when they sought to console his 
dying moments by ordaining that the fair park which 
owed its existence to his foresight should bear his 
name, they surely did not deem that Bushnell had in 
aught degraded religion while enforcing such earnest 
conviction of the sacredness of political duties. 

But in proof of my position that, in a community 
governed by discussion, the most wholesome and 
potent influence of the educated man is independent 
of political office, I need not turn from your own roll. 
Since your last anniversary the oldest graduate of this 
university has passed away. From the long proces- 
sion which yesterday, for the first time, entered these 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. 35 

doors, the most venerable figure was missing. De- 
riving his early nurture from these springs, his long, 
and useful, and honorable career was passed in a dis- 
tant city. In youth a scholar of fairest promise, yet 
never coveting mere intellectual gains as the highest 
acquisition, — achieving at the bar the foremost rank 
at a time when the leaders of the Philadelphia bar, to 
whom he stood opposed, would have graced West- 
minster Hall in its palmiest days, — instructing the 
bench with the research, the discrimination, the per- 
spicuity of his arguments ; and, while devoted to his 
profession, never relaxing his love of letters — a pro- 
ficient in the. literatures of France and Spain, delight- 
ing in history and poetry, a close student of the- 
ology, — he was much more than lawyer, much more 
than scholar. Always, with one brief exception, de- 
clining political office, indifferent to the honors which 
only waited his acceptance, he furnished a crowning 
proof of his eager interest in political issues and his 
unflagging zeal for the public welfare when, at the age 
of fourscore he issued from his well-earned retirement 
to uphold the pillars of the state ; and in the unflinch- 
ing courage with which he more than once faced and 
conquered a perverted public sentiment, he merited 
the tribute paid by the greatest Athenian historian to 
the greatest Athenian statesman, that " powerful from 
dignity of character as well as from wisdom, and con- 
spicuously above the least tinge of corruption, he held 
back the people with a free hand, and was their real 
leader instead of being led by them." Such is the 
sway of wisdom, of courage, of unsullied integrity. 
We live in evil days ; ominous clouds lower on our 
political horizon; but when I behold the unsought 



36 THE ALIENATION OF THE 

homage paid to a private citizen like Horace Binney, 
I gather new hope for the republic. 

Is not the fashioning of such a man the crowning 
achievement of a great university like this ? Let me 
not seem to disparage the wider scope which our time 
has given to university training. I heartily applaud 
the extended significance of liberal studies ; I rejoice 
in the enriched apparatus of discovery, in the mul- 
tiplied and exhilarating solicitations to research. I 
would throw these portals wide open to all investi- 
gation, yet still remembering that in the history of 
Higher Education the liberal arts were the precursors 
of special and professional studies, and that admirable 
culture of whatever kind must have its roots in the 
moral sentiment, I am unshaken in the conviction 
that a seat of liberal discipline fulfils its noblest func- 
tions in the rearing of wise, magnanimous, public- 
spirited men, — of men not merely equipped for spe- 
cific pursuits, but accustomed to the most generous 
recognition of the responsibilities resting upon man 
as man. Where, indeed, can we look for such but to 
our seats of learning ? and where so much as to such 
a seat of learning as this ? — a seat whose years re- 
mind us that the sources of our national life lie far 
back of the centennial period which we are this year 
commemorating ; the first ever founded by a free peo- 
ple through their elected representatives ; linked in 
its earliest days, with the statesman 

" Than whom a better senator ne'er held 
The helm of Rome ; " 

which hastened our independence by half a century ; 
which bears on its long catalogue the names of so 



EDUCATED CLASS FROM POLITICS. $7 

many public men, of so many patriots, of so many 
heroes. Let Harvard cherish letters ; let her foster 
the sciences ; let her lead in extending on every hand 
the frontiers of knowledge ; but let it be her chiefest 
glory, in the future, as in the past, to be called the 
Mother of Men. Let her sons as they survey these 
stately piles, as from year to year they delight to walk 
about her, to tell her towers, and consider her palaces, 
still repeat, as their proudest boast, — 

" Hie locus insignes magnosque creavit alumnos." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 371 638 6 



